[818a]
All these sciences should not be studied with minute accuracy by the majority of pupils, but only by a select few—and who these are we shall say when we have come near the end,—since that will be the proper place:1 but for the bulk of the pupils, while it would be shameful for most of them not to understand all those parts of them that are most truly termed “necessary,” yet it is not easy nor even at all possible for every student to go into them minutely. The necessary part of them it is impossible to reject, and probably this is what was in the mind
1 Cp. Plat. Laws 962c, Plat. Laws 965a.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 10 & 11 translated by R.G. Bury. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1967 & 1968.
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